


Embrace

by morganoconner



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bonding, M/M, Possession, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-12
Updated: 2010-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to avoid Detroit, Sam relinquishes his body to Gabriel temporarily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embrace

Sam breathes out slowly, closes his eyes. “Yes,” he whispers.

A gentle hand curves around his face, thumb stroking his cheek. “I’ll take care of you,” Gabriel promises, and then there is light and heat pressing down on him, closing in around him, enveloping him and sinking into him and it’s _too much_ , and Sam feels himself melt away.

~

There’s no way to tell how much time has passed when he comes to, but he doesn’t think it can be much. The room is still dark, and the sky outside is not yet lit with dawn. He is sitting on the edge of the bed, his head bowed, elbows resting on his thighs, hands clasped together. His eyes are open, focused on a spot of grime on the motel room floor, and when he tries to blink, he can’t.

He wants to be afraid, but the fear won’t come.

 _Gabriel…_ When he tries to speak, it’s just a thought, and the archangel is the only one who can hear him.

“Hey, kiddo.” Gabriel sounds relieved, and Sam wonders if he was afraid he would burn him out by accident. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thought…even now, deep within the recesses of his own mind, he can feel so _much_ of the archangel. He’s everywhere, pressing against every part of Sam, and it’s amazing he’s not spilling over, spilling out of this vessel that must seem too small. The power, the feel of him, is both agony and ecstasy to Sam’s limited understanding, and he tries to shove away from it even as he fights to pull it closer. “You should rest, Sam,” Gabriel says, gently. Even with Sam’s voice, the tone is surprising, coming from the archangel.

He feels something brush against his consciousness, and he floats away again.

~

He’s in a sun-drenched park with a phone pressed to his ear when he wakes next, sitting at a picnic table but facing away from it. Dean’s voice is in his ear, and it’s almost physically painful to hear his brother so close, and so out of reach. “Hey Sam, what’s up? Get a lead yet on the spirit?”

“Dean? I need to talk to you.” The tone is all wrong, the inflections, the shape of the words, and Sam knows that Dean is processing all of it.

“Where are you?” his brother asks, and his voice is low now, wary.

“The park just outside of town,” Gabriel says. “Bring Castiel.” And then he hangs up.

The fear that wouldn’t come before is creeping over him now at the thought of Dean’s reaction, but it’s still distant, muffled in a way that tells him Gabriel is keeping it from him as best he can. He wishes he wouldn’t, but doesn’t know how to ask.

 _He won’t accept this,_ he tells the archangel.

“He won’t have much of a choice,” is the reply, and Gabriel leans back so that his spine is pressed into the hard wood of the table behind him. His legs are spread in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and his arms are crossed over his chest as he tilts his head back and closes his eyes. Anyone would think he was perfectly relaxed, but Sam can feel the tension in his body, can feel the currents of stress that Gabriel tries to hide from him. They come through clearer than his _own_ feelings.

They both stay quiet while they wait, Gabriel so still he could almost be a statue in Sam’s skin, and Sam content to measure out the time in heartbeats. It’s only a few minutes before he hears a sharp intake of breath, and Gabriel opens his eyes slowly.

Castiel and Dean stand only a few feet away, and Dean must have been _really_ concerned, because even at the end of the world, he doesn’t allow Castiel to take him anywhere by ‘angel express’, not without a good reason. But Castiel is still grasping his arm, and there’s no car in sight, so he must have made an exception for this trip.

“Hey, bro,” Gabriel says, looking at Castiel, whose eyes have gone very wide. Next to him, Dean’s hands clench, and he’s trembling, rage lighting in his eyes.

“What the fuck did you do, you bastard?” Dean growls, stepping forward. Castiel’s hand drops to his side, and Sam thinks it speaks volumes that for once, the angel isn’t holding his brother back but practically urging him on.

“Now, hold up a sec and hear me out,” Gabriel says, drawing his legs back and standing. In Sam’s body, he’s somehow impossibly graceful, uncoiling and stretching to Sam’s full height as he stares Dean down.

“Gabriel, what have you _done?_ ” Castiel breathes.

“What was necessary,” the archangel snaps, eyes flicking briefly to Castiel and then back to Dean, who keeps coming forward menacingly. What he thinks he can accomplish, Sam doesn’t know, but it’s doubtful he’ll stop long enough to listen to reason. “I did exactly what Sam asked me to.”

“Sam wouldn’t have done that,” Dean says, but he’s stopped, looking unsure now. He remembers, just as well as Sam does, the need for consent. “He…he wouldn’t just…”

“He didn’t tell you because he was afraid you’d freak out,” Gabriel says, pointedly raising an eyebrow.

Castiel, who has been quiet now for a few moments, takes a step forward. “How could you, Gabriel? No matter if he asked or not, Sam was –”

“Sam _is,_ ” Gabriel cuts in smoothly. “Note the present tense, please.” Castiel blinks very slowly as he processes this.

“Sam…is? He’s still here?” the angel finally asks, tilting his head. “That should not be possible. How did you…”

“Not easily.” Gabriel sounds grumpy, but Sam remembers the relief in his voice when he first became aware again, when Gabriel first heard his voice.

“Sam’s okay?” Dean pipes in again, his voice cracking. Sam longs to reach out to him so badly, but he stays locked in the little corner Gabriel’s created for him in his mind.

“Sam’s fine. Better, Sam is _safe_. He asked me to do this so that Lucifer _couldn’t_.”

“Sam, you goddamned, self-sacrificing _idiot,_ ” Dean mutters, but his eyes are suspiciously bright, and his lips are tilted up just the tiniest bit. Castiel’s hand comes up to rest at his back, and the angel looks reassured as well. Dean’s eyes meet Gabriel’s, and he clenches his jaw, looking torn. “You’ll take care of him?” he finally asks.

“Course I will,” Gabriel replies with an eyeroll. Sam gives him a message and he laughs. “Your brother says to stop being a jerk.”

The tension leaves Dean’s shoulder in a rush, and he slumps, leaning into Castiel just enough that Sam notices. If Gabriel does – and of course, it’s almost a guarantee he _does_ – he says nothing. “Bitch,” the elder Winchester grumps.

For the first time, Sam allows himself to float freely, completely out from under the crushing weight of a responsibility he could not handle. Maybe it was a cop-out, asking Gabriel for this…but it can only end better for everyone.

~

It takes Sam a few weeks to finally ask Gabriel why he leaves him awake and aware most of the time, when it would almost certainly be easier for him to ride Sam’s body without his interference.

“Would you rather I knock you out and wake you back up when the apocalypse is over?” Gabriel asks, smirking as he checks over the weapons in their repertoire. Some, he traces a hand over, etching Enochian symbols to silver and steel with nothing but a thought. Others, he tosses back into the duffle carelessly, deeming them worthless.

 _Of course not,_ Sam replies, and if he were in his own skin, he’d be throwing what his brother calls a bitchface at the archangel. The thought makes him ache. _I just don’t understand why you’re so willing to put up with me all the time._

Gabriel’s hands still and his eyes go unfocused. The archangel can’t lie to him while they’re like this, can’t even bend the truth or sneak around it, and Sam waits patiently for an answer. When he finally speaks, his voice is low, his words guarded. “I’ve lived on earth for a long time. Cut off from my family for hundreds of years, after an entire existence of being in constant connection to all of them… It’s lonely, Sam. Impossibly so. For the first time in a long time, I finally feel a measure of that connection with someone again, and yeah, maybe it’s a little bit…unconventional, but you make me feel like maybe I’m not so lost anymore.”

Sam is struck speechless by this. Gabriel, open and honest and so very _real_ , and it’s so uncharacteristic, but at the same time, it feels like the true Gabriel shining through for the first time, and he can’t help but cling to it, hold on to that warmth like he’ll drown if he lets it go. _Gabriel…_

But the moment has already passed. “And besides, you can be good for a laugh occasionally,” the archangel says with a grin.

Sam wants to offer Gabriel some words of understanding, some sort of reassurance that he _gets it_ , but there’s nothing he can do, no words he can say that Gabriel will appreciate. Still, he reaches out with his consciousness and presses against Gabriel’s essence. He doesn’t understand what he doing, but he needs that connection desperately. He doesn’t expect for the archangel to tense, hands clenching on the knife he’s holding. His neck arches just slightly, and some small sound escapes his throat.

“Sam, what are you… _ahhh, Sam!_ ”

Sam is winding himself around the light and heat and _burning_ that is the archangel, caressing him in the only way he can like this, and he’s not sure how it started, not sure how his desire to comfort became a desire for _this_ , but it feels right, it feels _perfect_ , and Gabriel is arching back as Sam continues to move, a low moan clawing it’s way out of him and causing the windows to rattle in their frames.

Sam can feel the steady pulse of desire coursing through the body Gabriel is borrowing, _his_ body, and it’s familiar and wonderful, and Gabriel isn’t blocking these feelings from him now, can’t because he’s so overwhelmed by what Sam is doing to him. He finds the part of Gabriel that is the hottest, the most intense, and presses against it tightly, no longer simply a caress but an embrace. As he pushes into Gabriel as much as he can, as the archangel pants and groans and cries out in rapture, it’s as though they’re merging into one being. _Let go, Gabriel,_ Sam whispers, and he holds on as tightly as he can, just for a second, and in that second…

…Gabriel _breaks._

~

They don’t speak of it again.

Two weeks later, Team Free Will defeats Lucifer and stops the apocalypse against all odds. Dean turns to him, sweaty and grimy and covered in blood – most of it not his own, thank God – and grins, large and bright and happier than Sam thinks he’s ever seen before. “First thing you should do is give my brother his body back, and then we’re gonna do some serious Winchester-style celebrating,” he says, clapping Gabriel on the shoulder. Then he turns to his other side and pulls Castiel into a hug that Gabriel will undoubtedly mock him for later.

Sam wants to be happy, and he _is_ …but Dean’s words leave him feeling empty, a gaping hole in him where there should be nothing but sheer joy that they finally won, that the world is safe.

The thing is, he doesn’t _want_ to lose Gabriel. In fact, just the thought of it is enough to feel like shards of ice are stabbing into him, and if he had a body to do so, he’d be trembling.

“Calm down, Sam,” Gabriel murmurs. He nods to Castiel, and with a snap of his fingers brings him and Sam back to the motel room, where he sits on the bed and takes a few deep breaths. Sam realizes he’s in the exact same position he was in when Sam first awoke after giving his body up to the archangel, and the symmetry throws him for a moment, because it feels like so much has changed.

_Gabriel, I don’t know what –_

“Shh. It’s okay. I know.” Gabriel sighs. “I can’t have this conversation with you without being able to look at you.” He snaps his fingers one more time, and his vessel – his true vessel – is suddenly in front of them on the floor, brought back from wherever he’s been keeping it safe. Because Gabriel created it, and it’s not technically human, it’s as perfect as the day he left it, not a hair out of place, not a single piece of it decomposed or rotting.

A sharp ache spreads through Sam at the sight of it. _No…_ he moans quietly. _Gabriel, don’t –_

“I know it’s hard to tell now, but you’ll thank me when you’ve had a chance to process. And Sam, I’m not really going anywhere far. I promise.”

Sam can already feel him pulling, _tearing_ away, and he cries out as agony lances through him, though he can’t tell if it’s physical pain or emotional pain or both. Light fills the room, and he’s left gasping in the aftereffects of Gabriel’s blinding, burning essence pouring out of him.

Tears are streaming down his face when he’s aware of the world again in a way that makes sense. Gabriel is sitting up, turned toward Sam, one knee drawn up with an arm draped over it, his head tilted to the side as they regard each other. “Okay, Sam?” he asks, voice soft.

Sam breathes deeply and evaluates as he swipes a hand over his eyes. It’s so _different_ , having control of his body again, and it feels strange and wrong in a way he hadn’t expected at all when he’d first asked this of Gabriel. There’s an ache he can still feel from Gabriel leaving, but upon further inspection, he discovers something amazing.

The connection is still there.

He can still _feel_ the archangel, wrapped into and around his soul, so tightly bound that there’s no chance of ever ripping him away. His eyes, wide and confused, find Gabriel’s, and the archangel smirks.

“You did something sort of phenomenally stupid,” Gabriel says, leaning back on his hands. “And I gotta tell you, I’m a little impressed, because if you had asked me, I would have told you it wasn’t even possible.”

“What?” Sam isn’t sure if he wants to be terrified or intrigued, but Gabriel doesn’t really look _worried_ or _upset_ , and surely that has to be a good thing…

“You irrevocably joined your soul to my grace. Your little ‘moment of comfort’ bound us together permanently.”

If Sam wasn’t already sitting, he’d be falling right now, because that…was _not_ what he expected. “I…what?”

Gabriel stands, approaches Sam with that casual grace the hunter remembers envying. Before Sam can even ask what he’s doing, Gabriel is sitting astride his lap, knees pressed into the bed, arms draped around Sam’s neck. “You made _this,_ ” he said, punctuating the word with a roll of his hips that has Sam gasping, “something I can indulge in for however long I want to, or in other words, the rest of my existence, guilt-free.”

“Oh,” Sam stutters out weakly, arching back and trying to thrust up into Gabriel all at once. “Is that all?”

Gabriel’s lips quirk, and he presses himself fully against Sam as he claims his mouth, getting them as close as he can while they’re still fully clothed, though _that’s_ something he clearly plans to rectify soon, and Sam finds he doesn’t mind the thought at all. He wraps his arms around Gabriel’s waist and pulls him in even tighter.

He realizes that being there in Gabriel’s embrace feels like being home, and the thought brings with it such pure elation that Sam can’t help but laugh into the archangel’s mouth in unadulterated joy.

-  



End file.
